11 Of The Most Expensive Items Made In The USA | So Expensive | Insider Business

from handcrafted Steinway pianos in New York City and Copper River king salmon from Alaska to hand Forge Damascus gnomes in New England and Cuban link chains from Miami we're taking you on a road trip across the USA to uncover the stories behind some of America's most valuable items our first stop is the Stetson Factory in Garland Texas where the iconic cowboy hats are still produced the old-fashioned way it's a quintessentially American accessory that's been worn by the likes of President Ronald Reagan and Beyonce a Stetson cowboy hat is stretched shrunk and submerged in water before it fully takes form those are only a few stages in the two-day process that can make these hats so costly you won't find the popular Skyline style for less than 245 dollars on stetson's website that's little compared to this one which will set you back five thousand dollars but it's not just how these hats are made Stetson is one of the few hat brands that have reached icon status so what made Stetson so iconic and is that why these hats are so expensive producing a Stetson cowboy hat is a complicated and costly process the production begins here in Garland Texas where workers turn fur into felt Stetson says it's one of the few cowboy hat makers in the U.S that makes hat bodies from scratch this means it buys its own raw fur pelts and processes them into felt compared to some other companies that buy pre-made hat bodies with the fur already Blended fur is the biggest indicator of quality and therefore has the biggest impact on price in the fur room Stetson stores fur from Portugal New Jersey Belgium and Ukraine okay this sunburned natural beaver foreign ER the finer Beaver hats are made out of natural beaver very tight fur very durable fur good for all the weather rain nice feel [Music] the fur isn't cheap just one pound of beaver fur can cost 125 dollars a chinchilla fur can cost four times the price now consider that Stetson only produces about two hats per pound of fur after the different furs are mixed together the blend goes through a blower which separates long hair from down Stetson uses down fur because it produces a stronger felt the machines in the factory are crucial but the job couldn't be done without trained workers the company employs more than 200 workers at two factories to guide the hats through each stage another element that ultimately impacts the price about 100 sets of hands touch every single one of our hats as of right now workers pass the felt through several stages of shrinking until the proper hat size is reached later during the Tipping stage a worker helps create the crown by stretching and pulling the Hat then as an employee turns the felt brass fingers of another machine push the bottom out to form the brim one of the last stages of producing the Hat body happens here at the forming machine where the hat is submerged in hot water an employee pushes down the former and out comes the final half body at the finishing Factory machines taper and shape the crown of the hat but the next few stages require special attention even as a machine Sands the Hat an employee again must be there to guide and feel it the worker will decide when it has reached the proper thickness at other stations craftspeople use scissors and pliers to secure the Buckle accent others cut and sew on the leather strap by hand then the inner satin lining no hat makes it out of the factory without a final Quality Inspection all hats go through roughly the same process but premium ones have a few more features that impact the final cost at five thousand five dollars the Diamante Premiere hat is one of the most expensive cowboy hats you can buy it's made with two high quality Furs chinchilla and beaver there's also the addition of the 14 karat gold buckle set which can add one thousand dollars to the cost of a hat quality is only one reason Stetson has the confidence to make a hat like this and be sure customers will buy it to understand the other piece of the puzzle you have to go back to stetson's beginning more than 150 years ago the founder John Batterson Stetson is often credited with inventing the modern day cowboy hat and setting the precedent for what the style should be there are many replicas of the Burberry trench coat but they were the original and they sort of set the industry standard for that specific product and I think Stetson has also done these very similar thing where they have set a precedent with uh you know the celebrities the politicians wearing the hat and giving it that added value of yes this is a luxury piece in the late 1800s Sharpshooter Annie Oakley became one of the first famous figures to Don the Hat in fact in 2012 a Stetson hat worn by Oakley sold at auction for just over seventeen thousand dollars while Stetson saw a dip in popularity in the 60s demand picked back up in the early 80s reignited by the release of the Indiana Jones movies the Hat reached the heads of other famous figures like President Ronald Reagan around this time too but by the 21st century the kind of famous face wearing a Stetson had changed [Music] Dua lipa's 2021 video for love again opens on a shot of a floating Stetson then a shot of the singer looking stylish and seductive while wearing the hat and here are two more notable examples that show how Stetson has linked itself with high status there's Gigi Hadid holding a Stetson hat in this Vogue shoe in 2018 and three years later Beyonce wearing Stetson on the cover of Harper's Bazaar in September 2021 both prove again how the brand has evolved to something worthy of being worn by the world's biggest names if you idolize those musicians you're going to want to wear the brands that they wear it takes about 11 months to craft just one Steinway and Sons grand piano and these instruments don't come cheap a Model D concert piano in Ebony the most affordable finish of any Steinway piano will cost you about 187 thousand dollars but that's nowhere near how high prices can reach Steinway has produced two of the most expensive pianos in the world worth over two million dollars each the next most expensive piano is half the price at 1.2 million dollars but with several other premium pianos on the market is there something about steinway's sound that stands out and is that what makes these pianos so expensive named the Rolls-Royce of pianos by the BBC Steinway has produced some of the most sought after grand pianos for over 160 years it's the piano of choice for Billy Joel long long and many other professional musicians but compared to other high-end piano makers it's often steinway's sound that sets it apart as a performer I can wear many different masks depending on the piece that I'm playing there's some pieces you want to be very very diabolical you know a list you know and at the same time lightness to them creating that sound starts here in New York at one of only two Steinway factories in the world [Music] each grand piano is five to nine feet long and weighs between 540 and 990 pounds often the bigger the piano the pricier it will be about 85 percent of a Steinway piano is made of wood and one of the most crucial Woods is used for the sound board soundboard is the life of the instrument the soul of the instrument this is Alaskan Sitka Spruce this is the most expensive wood that we have in the piano and we actually get it from the trees primarily that are on the Shady Side the north facing side of these islands so they grow very little each year and that means that we have growth rings that are very close together not spaced apart Spruce is used in other strained instruments like guitars and it grows in a few areas in the Northwest U.S but more than 50 percent of the Alaskan sick of spruce they Source won't meet Steinway standards the wood must have a very specific grain density and Direction both which can impact the quality of sound Steinway looks for closely packed straight grains no more than plus or minus 15 degrees off a 90 degree vertical grain there's a reason it's so strict about this it's partly why when you press a key on a Steinway piano you hear a distinctly long sustained tone thank you The soundboard's Edge must attach perfectly to the piano's Rim the curved wooden frame of the instrument the full rim is made up of an inner and outer rim some piano makers attach each of these pieces separately but at Steinway a team of Artisans spends both together Steinway says this method gives the piano a stronger Foundation lowering the chances it will break Steinway uses Hard Rock Maple for both the inner and outer rims the key here is to use wood that will again allow sound to flow freely some companies as an example will will have hard rock Maple for the outside Rim but the inside room to save money they'll use something like Luan Luan is not as dense and hard as hard rock Maple and when you have your sound waves in that soundboard some of them are being absorbed a little bit by that Luan more than they would be by Hard Rock maple [Music] the consistent touch of the keys is another valuable element unique to each sideway piano there are just two artisans in the entire Factory trusted with weighing off all 88 keys of every keyboard this ensures each key is balanced so a Pianist won't have to use more Force to press one key over another I used to dream about the pianos chasing me now it's not a problem it's up to date a boss and listen you know I pay attention to what it wants that's the key to it pay attention and watch that hammer that's the key to it each key is connected to a felt Hammer when pressed the hammer strikes the strings to create sound a key shouldn't respond to the fingers touch too quickly or too slowly so when I go to check the return it stays you see a hesitation it's no good that means it'll stay up in the piano to see how fast that one is that's too fast so I take this one away then I put this one back and it wants the small one you see so I put the small one you see how nice it is and that tells me what it wants so that shows you the difference everyone is different one of the most difficult jobs is the final tone inspection the goal is to create a balanced tone throughout the piano by slightly adjusting the Hammers as needed from note to note we can soften or Harden these mallets or hammers as we call them and balance the sound that they generate into the string the quality of piano's tone is incredibly nuanced something only an experienced ear can decipher if I take this note and then soften it in this case I will put a needle in the hammer to soften it and you'll hear that tone change [Music] it's a little bit smaller and in increments small steps I can go through and find the notes that are too big too bright and step them down well I'm 58 and I started when I was 28 so that's 30 years and counting it's still I'm still learning how to do this it never stops like the ways you can customize a Rolls-Royce car you can do similarly with a Steinway piano [Music] depending on special editions veneers and wood finishes prices for a single piece can reach five hundred thousand dollars like these pianos designed for Steinway by Lenny Kravitz in the piano Vault underneath the factory Steinway houses one of the most expensive pianos it's ever produced worth two and a half million dollars on average the price of a new Steinway piano increases about four percent every year this is partly because the cost of Alaskan Sitka Spruce increases at a higher rate than inflation according to Steinway [Music] and while the new pieces get more expensive old ones become more valuable too a Steinway piano can last several decades with the required touch-ups and Restorations [Music] a 1965 Steinway Model D Piano is worth over ninety eight thousand dollars today that's more than 13 times what it likely sold for and although there are several elements that greatly impact the price it's the musician who ultimately decides what the piano is worth to them this is a Damascus knife Master bladesmith Zach Jonas is twisting a fusion of Steels to make one of its trademark's World patterns but these unique swalls are more than just decorative successfully welding dozens or even thousands of Steel layers creates some of the strongest and sharpest knives money can buy what starts as individual layers of two different Alloys transforms into this seven inch chef's knife that retails for seven hundred dollars some of Zack's knives cost five thousand dollars and commissions can reach well over seventeen thousand dollars so how are swirl patterns made from steel and why are Damascus knives so expensive [Music] what people tend to notice right away when looking at Damascus is that visual pattern and it ranges from a very very bold and big layers to very very fine and shimmery layers and you're going to see that pattern jump out at you and you're going to see the way the light plays off of it and it's going to Shimmer and look almost holographic at times the bladesmithing community refers to this effect as a chatoyans or the shrine of a cat's eye from the Striking pattern quality Damascus knives are known to be hard but flexible and able to maintain a sharp edge to make Damascus steel Zack starts by layering two different kinds of high carbon steel managing the layers means more work for the Smith and while high-end mono Steel knives May perform similarly Damascus knives are coveted for their striking appearance and the craftsmanship required to achieve it clicking the layers together Zach puts the stack in the Forge and heats it to about 2 300 degrees Fahrenheit he needs an experienced eye to judge when the steel is ready because it's at risk of breaking off the handle while the layers are not yet forged welded together Zach needs to consider the kind of pattern he wants to make before he can begin forging a bold pattern means fewer layers and a more intricate pattern can require several thousand foreign and working with so many layers to achieve his intended design means lots of things can go wrong out of thousands of hammer strikes a single blow in the wrong place can ruin the pattern even when the pattern is done to perfection Zach has to forged the steel into a knife without distorting the design and if he forges the steel when it's too cold it can crack and he has to start over which for Damascus steel can mean losing a week's worth of work once he Forge welds the steel into a Long Bar Zack can begin folding over the layers the layer count has the most effect on the price the more layers the more folding and work for Zach which means a higher price point the pattern on this particular knife called Texas wind has only 45 layers which is why Zack sells it for just under a thousand dollars but his more expensive knives can have 5 000 layers and that can take a month to complete giving it a higher price tag so you can see I'm twisting the steel with this wrench it's got to be real hot if it gets too cool the layers will want to shear and come apart and then the piece is trash keeping track of the rate that I'm twisting at counting as I go this technique is specific to twist Damascus and it creates star-like patterns on the steel too much twisting and the steel will run a Shear but the tighter The Twist the more dramatic the pattern and that'll do it when Zach is making a standard Damascus wave pattern he continues to work on elongating and thinning the bar using a power hammer Zach's larger power hammer cost him twenty thousand dollars but that's just a drop in the bucket he spent at least one hundred thousand dollars on Specialized Machinery but this large investment allows Zach to produce high quality Damascus knives one Sac Ford is the tip of the blade he cross-checks it with his template to ensure the knife looks exactly as it should now it needs to undergo a metallurgical change which is called heat treatment and this part is hardening and without doing this the thing might be shaped like a knife but it won't behave like a knife it won't take an edge it won't hold an edge so the heat treatment is really really a critical process and it determines the Metallurgy and therefore the performance of the finished knife but it's the quenching that makes or breaks the knife sometimes a blade will fail in the quench by cracking or warping irretrievably looks like the blade came through the hardening process really well it's straight it doesn't have much warping little warps can be corrected and I can see that the scale has blown away from the surface of the steel here which tells me that the steel has contracted and become hard and that's what I was looking for so now this is ready for finish grinding and then a handle the grinding operation is one of the areas where the skill is kind of most important and most obvious and this is one of the things that really drives the cost a single slip can can ruin the piece in an instant the handle is also an important factor when pricing the final product some materials like local Maple are more affordable for Zach but this Arizona Ironwood costs him 10 times as much it's also a harder wood than maple and requires more work to shape Zach designs the handles so they serve the purpose of the knife he makes kitchen knife handles slim but large enough for the chef to have a firm grip a hunting knife on the other hand requires different properties it might be used with cold or wet hands which can cause them to slip the final step in creating a Damascus knife is the etching which makes the pattern Bolder to the eye once dipped in the etchant mixture one of the Alloys oxidizes and turns darker while the other alloy resists maintaining its color now the Damascus pattern is revealed but Zach isn't done yet he needs to assess the quality of his creation let's test the edge and I use paper for this this is a simple test should glide through with no problem this knife is razor sharp with no dullness that needs adjusting it's ready to sell to chefs like Diego Moya Diego has been a chef for 27 years and focuses on vegetable cookery I've had some sharp knives but this one kind of out of the gate just feels like it Glides through without any resistance at all it's pretty amazing you basically it just does exactly what your arm wants it to do you don't have to fight it he's using a 10 inch chef's knife made by Zach which costs 1 200 I think the experience is one of effortlessness I think you just forget that you're using a knife and I think that when when you forget using an iPhone you use your arm to produce The Cutting motion that's pure Bliss for this kind of experience you have to you have to pay the price work that's gone into the knife they purchase and the skill level required to make a quality Damascus knife Zach is one of the fewer than 200 Master bladesmiths designated by the American bladesmith society to earn the title they must successfully produce a Damascus Blade with a minimum of 300 layers the blade must be strong tough sharp and balanced in Zack's case he had to take the test twice before getting the master smith title the knife performance test includes cutting through a 2x4 and even shaving hair off his arm but it was a presentation test that set Zach back because of a 10 degree misalignment in the handle since becoming a master smith Zach has continued to evolve his skills in Damascus making one of his current projects might sell for over one hundred thousand dollars if it's officially commissioned so this is a project that I've been working on designing for quite a while this is a very elaborate Middle Eastern sword a type of Scimitar this is a rough ground blade that I forged out of 1500 layer Damascus the demand for Damascus knives has created a market for fake Damascus where manufacturers imprint the swirl patterns on the knife and sell it at a more affordable price you can get a Damascus knife for 30 bucks but it will not cut anything for you there's definitely a growing demand for Damascus steel when I started out knife making it was not super well known and I've really seen it myself in the last 15 years or so as as the cultural awareness has come up and people really understand what they're looking at this spacesuit built in 1974 was reported to cost between 15 and 22 million dollars today that would be about 150 million having not delivered any new mission-ready extra-vehicular suits since then NASA is running out of spacesuits in fact NASA are down to just four flight ready Eva suits since 2009 NASA has invested more than 200 million dollars in spacesuit development recently unveiling the X emu prototype but NASA still does not have a new Fleet of spacesuits so why is it taken so long for new spacesuits to be built and what makes them so expensive spacesuits are so expensive because they are complex human shaped spacecraft think about them in terms of spacecraft not as work clothes a spacesuit has to protect an astronaut from the vacuum of space from radiation coming from the Sun and other bodies and it has to protect against fast traveling particles that are traveling up to 18 000 miles an hour they could penetrate the suit they provide oxygen Communications Telemetry and everything else that a human needs to survive all rolled into one tiny human form spacecraft but the spacesuits NASA currently uses are more than 40 years old 18 suits were developed for the space shuttle program in 1974. and have vastly overworked their original 15-year life design suit number one was only used for certification while suit 2 was destroyed during ground testing two suits were lost in the Challenger disaster in 1986 and another two in the Columbia disaster in 2003 the most recent space suit loss was Unit 17 during SpaceX 7's cargo Mission mishap the exact cost to replace this unit is unknown but estimates range as high as 250 million dollars for the remaining 11 suits the damage is mounting with seven in various stages of refurbishment and maintenance that leaves only four flight ready spacesuits aboard the International Space Station in fact NASA's first all-female spacewalk was postponed because the space station had only one medium-sized suit this Milestone was finally achieved when NASA sent up a medium torso shell to fit the existing larger suit NASA has invested about a quarter of a billion dollars developing the ex-emu suit for its Artemis program which plans to take humans back to the surface of the Moon by 2024 with a view to eventually go to Mars with that goal fast approaching and the number of existing spacesuits dwindling NASA Engineers face a new kind of Space Race there is an absolutely a sense of urgency not only because of the number of Suits itself is relatively small but the individual components that we use to keep the suits healthy and moving forward is also dwindling a great example of that is the carbon dioxide sensors the design that the current suits fly is a Heritage design some of the components of which are no longer produced some of the vendors that made those components no longer even exist and so today the CO2 sensor is a great example of a component where a replacement design that will work for both the existing suit and the new suit basically be a drop-in replacement that's compatible with both suit designs these people-shaped spacecraft are packed with complex components but the most expensive parts are subject to debate the most expensive component of the spacesuit are the gloves the gloves are the most complex because the astronauts need them for manual dexterity to do meaningful work in space you see the interior you see a system of pulleys and strings that hold it together and then on the outside of the glove you see the system of heat radiators that allow the astronaut to keep their hands warm the gloves are an amazing and intricate component but at the end of the day the pressure garment including the gloves is actually less expensive than the life support system the backpack that is worn on the back of the suit is a highly compressed set of technologies that do everything from maintain temperature to remove carbon dioxide and continue to provide pressure inside the suit itself and I think in the end several of those components are each more expensive than most of the other garment components like the gloves but even these expertly engineered suits can go wrong in 2013 European Space Agency astronaut Luca parmitano reported that his helmet started filling with water that stuff on your forehead is not sweat no Cash Coming open copy all Chris you could have some towels ready that would be great in total almost one and a half liters of water leaked into his helmet threatening to drown parmitano mid-spacewalk [Music] but considering that NASA's Apollo era spacesuits allowed 12 humans to walk on the moon 50 years ago and considering the space shuttle era suits have been used on over 200 spacewalks it's such a large investment in new spacesuits needed well that depends on what you're going to ask the astronauts to do Walking on Mars is different from walking on the moon it's a different environment it has different hazards so when you're picking up these assignments for astronauts you have to take into account do you want the astronaut to be able to walk bend over pick up things or will he or she be carrying something so you have all those considerations that have to fold into that design we believe it is a necessity some of the components and some of the Design Concepts are no longer consistent with our values and expectations in terms of the quantity and distribution of crew members that we fit I believe that yes the investment is appropriate and worthwhile all those dollars get spent here on the ground and they are returned to us in ways that ultimately yield benefits for all humanity and for the taxpayers here in this country we are also lowering the barriers to entry from a commercial perspective getting more companies involved all getting more companies competing and innovating to try to continue to reduce that price in an effort to develop technology at lower costs NASA often sets design challenges for innovation sometimes partnering with the designers and companies who impress the most in the 2009 astronaut glove challenge Ted Southern bagged the second place prize of a hundred thousand dollars he and his partner Nikolai moysiff a leading Russian spacesuit engineer used their winnings to form final frontier design we as a business were formed about 10 years ago and have worked with NASA on components of Eva suits for that whole time NASA's our biggest customer and we've delivered prototype components for the suit including a glove elbow shoulder assemblies parts and pieces but just over the last two years we've focused on bringing the whole system together and final frontier plans to build its own Eva suit much much cheaper than NASA's we intend to deliver flight level suits with similar requirements as NASA's our suits are made with the same material as the Seuss that NASA used down to the mill traditionally spacesuits are very expensive I expect our suit development will be in the multi-million dollar range but I hope that our Eva system will be around 2 million dollars a piece or less even though NASA has not officially released the unit price of the new xemu suit it's safe to say their costs will be much higher if we were to take the design of the suit we have today if we were to reproduce copies of that suit we believe that would cost us in the range of 15 to 25 million per unit but we do believe that the design that we're developing today with the xcmu should not only stay within that range we actually believe that competition and The Innovation that we've fostered will actually drive that cost lower per unit how does NASA's spacesuit costs compare with other countries Russia's equivalent of the Emu suit is called the Orlan like NASA it also has four suits aboard the space station but it also has Reserves both at the Cosmonaut training center in Star City Russia and at Johnson Space Center in Houston Texas according to Nikolai moysiff who is one of the few Engineers to work on both America's emu and Russia's Orland unlike NASA Ross Cosmos has continually developed new generations of spacesuits moisev personally participated in the development of five generations of Russian spacesuits and estimates that 24 units were made between 1997 and 2002 with a further 24 units made between 2002 and 2019. Ross Cosmos is also developing a new Eva suit for Russia's first proposed moon landing by 2030 with Russian technology in a cycle of constant development an American emu Fleet continuing to age more commercial opportunities could become available for private companies like final frontier to develop spacesuit Technologies at lower prices in 2017 Elon Musk revealed the SpaceX Iva spacesuit although this intravier killer suit is only for use inside the spacecraft its 3D printed helmet and custom-made garments are a glimpse into the future of commercial spaceware but is there an actual need for cheaper spacesuits or is space exploration unavoidably expensive I believe the world needs cheaper spacesuits because it in my opinion it's inevitable that we will expand past the surface of the Earth we need to take advantage of the resources of space to keep our planet healthy and alive so whether it's spacesuits or rocket technology or means of living in microgravity all of these things I think are important for the future of humanity [Music] it's one two step for me for giant Coast financing even in the high-end world of jewelry Cuban link chains are a symbol of luxury this 18 karat gold chain is worth twenty seven thousand dollars and some of the most valuable chains will cost 10 times that making a single chain requires the skill of more than five experienced Jewelers and can take over 12 hours so how exactly are Cuban link chains made and is that what makes them so expensive somebody had to literally take 14 hours of their day running hot Steel through Machinery to then turn it by hand to then file it by hand so then polish it by hand you're not just wearing a chain you're wearing somebody's Blood Sweat and Tears and passion around your neck the origin of the Cuban link chain is tough to pinpoint but it likely didn't start in Cuba it was a quintessential part of hip-hop style in the 70s and 80s and grew in popularity as hip-hop became more mainstream in the US but not all Cuban link chains are created equal many Cuban link chains are made by machines in countries like the US Italy and China but the authentic and most expensive ones are made by hand at just a few shops in Miami when you move into the higher end of Cuban link chains which you get into the fifty thousand eighty thousand hundred thousand dollar chains those have to be handmade one because of the attention to detail the file the tight links it's like going to a Ferrari dealer you could buy a Ferrari off the lot or you can have it major how you want this is a custom build a chain like this goes through 30 manual and time-consuming stages the skills come from your ability and practice and knowledge worldwide I can't tell you an exact number within South Florida there's a handful of people literally a handful of people that could do this not only is this process incredibly labor intensive it's also dangerous Chino and his crew work with 1 000 degree Flames to melt down the gold and form it into a bar you definitely got to be paying attention to what you're doing in this job one mess up you're gonna hurt yourself there has been people that have lost fingers in this in this business that bar passes through a rolling machine as many as 12 times just to make it thinner each of the nine Jewelers at Gold Fever Miami has a specific job at the stretch bench one Jeweler can spend over an hour just stretching the wire to length this isn't dirt it's actual gold if you look at my ads you'll see the place of gold on them this wire then gets curled around a copper Rod to form the shape for the links for smaller chains a drill gets the job done but thicker ones need the strength of two Jewelers the most crucial stage of the process comes next it also requires the most skill soldering is the most intricate part of what you're doing essentially what you're doing is you're heating up gold and right before it begins to break down and melt you're introducing solder solder is another type of metal that's used to permanently close each link so it's the balance of applying the right amount of flame with the right amount of technique to when those two metals meet that solder melts and fuses into the gold so if you left too long the whole thing is just Liquid Gold if done way too early the solder won't melt properly and you won't get that Fusion between the legs you can't mess that up or you're going to create gaps in the chain and you can't be scared to stop and just do it all over again it's no secret the price of gold plays a part in determining the cost of these chains an ounce of gold costs Seventeen hundred dollars today but even the most high-end Cuban links are mixed with something else gold itself is a very soft material typically too soft to be made into jewelry on its own it has to be alloyed with other metals white gold for example is an alloy of gold made of white metals like silver zinc and nickel those Metals make the gold more pliable allowing it to be stretched and twisted during the jewelry making process but they can be especially difficult to work with one small movement can make all the difference in rare cases with white gold this can happen this is the reason why it costs so much if any one of these links break you then have to take it back to the soldering table re-solder it and bring it back here and turn it again once the links are properly turned and tightened the chain will lie flat a jeweler must then file down the chain so that each side is level and looks exactly the same and here is where the passion of the Jeweler comes into hand to how beautiful he can make that shape [Music] but these Cuban links in particular didn't become so sought after or so valuable until recently Google Trends shows that searches for Cuban link chains began taking off in 2012 and in the last two years Gold Fever Miami sales have grown 100 times over the shop used to sell two thousand dollars worth of Cuban links a month that number is now over two hundred thousand dollars whether you're the most famous or you're just starting off to legitimize yourself as a rapper you have to have jewelry and if you have jewelry you have a Miami Cuban link chain in 2012 Jay-Z wore one of the priciest Cuban links made at the time worth two hundred thousand dollars a year later Daddy Yankee debuted his 10 kilo Cuban link chain in a music video and there's even more traction in the music industry now they're so intertwined with pop culture more specifically hip-hop and reggaeton just about every song that has a music video will have a rapper with a Miami Cuban link chain it's become in a way like a status symbol we have customers that want to match their Rolexes to their chains these versions are often decked out with diamonds which naturally makes them pricier but Gus doesn't see demand slowing for chains like this or the more modest ones right now as of March of 2021 we are pumping anywhere from 10 to 15 kilos in five days so per five weeks and we still can't keep up with the demand we still have a wait time of five to seven weeks this coupled with the Steep price of gold means prices likely won't drop anytime soon keep going keep going often referred to as the wagyu of salmon Copper River King Salmon can cost up to 120 dollars per pound it's like retail price fifteen hundred two thousand dollars right here that's six times as much as other wild salmon and 10 times more than farmed salmon this salmon is extremely rare to come by for Fishers in Cordova Alaska it means spending entire days in Dangerous Waters using life-threatening equipment and spending thousands of dollars on a permit all with the serious chance of coming back to Port empty-handed so is Copper River King Salmon worth the challenge and why is it so expensive King Salmon also called Chinook salmon is one of the five species of wild Pacific salmon swimming through the Alaskan Waters the Copper River King is the largest and most nutritious of them all the color of the copper of salmon is just so vibrant it's such a deep deep red and it's like one of those things when you see it it's very obvious that that's a Copper River salmon and it just tastes so buttery it's amazing Kyle and his crew set sail in the early hours of the morning from the Cordova Harbor it will take them two hours to reach the Delta of the Copper River King Salmon will stay in the Copper River delta for only three to six weeks kings are the first wild salmon of the season and the start of the season is unpredictable although it roughly always falls around mid-may Fishers won't know it's time to set sail until less than a day before we typically have such a short window to fish it's really important for me to be able to make quick decisions unpredictable so builds up the excitement that's insane that's insane the location is the first challenge for Kyle and his crew the Delta of the river is very large and not a lot of salmon swim in that area so Fishers like Kyle have to take their boats to shallow Waters it's extremely dangerous to fish for a copper over King Salmon because they like to hang out in Shallow Waters and when you're fishing in that area you're a lot more exposed to Mother Nature you know the waves are crushing they're breaking on top of you and you're a lot more susceptible to capsizing your boat um we're about to pick our anchor and then we're gonna make a set once the anchor is set the chances of catching anything are Slim King Salmon makes up only a small percentage of the salmon in the Copper River ninety percent is Sockeye that makes Kyle's job extremely difficult aside from that local laws require he uses specific Nets called Gill Nets they're hung vertically to catch the fish by their gills Gill netting is an extremely effective way to catch these fish because each net is hand built and completely customized so you know for Copper River King Salmon we use a lot a lot larger mesh size around six inches so the smaller fish swim right through it and you know when we are able to locate a king salmon they fit perfectly in our net King King give me a second I'll explain in a second should have pulled them over the bow ah So what had happened was you know so King Salmon they're they're really large fish and they typically don't really get stuck into the net they usually just wrap up um so it's imperative that you have a dip net to catch them in case they pop out and what had happened there was the first king of the day I was super super excited I had the net underneath and it had already peaked and started to Crown over the bow roller and I uh I tried to reach forward to pull it over but because that popped off and I was only holding the div net with one hand and because the King was so large it overpowered me and ended up swimming out but the same features that make Gill net such an effective way to catch King Salmon are also what make using them so dangerous there are a lot of Hazards and dangers using a gill net specifically on deck for the crew just because we are using hydraulic equipment to send the net out into the water there's a lot of loose mesh that goes flying out so any you know loose strings from a hoodie or shoelaces all those are really prone to getting snagged missed catches are common here in the Copper River Even after spending his whole day out on the boat Kyle has a serious chance of coming back empty-handed that makes the fish that he does catch even more prized yeah go go oh we just caught this toad of a copper river King Salmon this one probably weighs probably 30 35 pounds um I feel like retail price we you know this goes like fifteen hundred two thousand dollars right here and um just for a size comparison this is uh a Copper River sockeye salmon he has got a darker mouth and also on top of the spine you'll see he's got spots along the line and also this nice silver spots on the tail as well so this one right here is probably 22 pounds gross it's a very beautiful very fatty Copper River King Salmon um very excited that we got the first the first one on board uh Dave's getting started and uh looking forward to catching many more the huge size of the Copper River King Salmon is due to its migration wild salmon are born in freshwater streams like the Copper River and then migrate to the ocean as juveniles after spending most of their lives at Sea they returned to their home to spawn for the Kings returning to the Copper River this means enduring a 300 mile long journey against a seven mile per hour current swimming between glaciers and gaining 3 600 feet in elevation copper of salmon have the most intense salmon migratory route out of any salmon in the world because of that long journey home it has a huge impact on the flavor of the copper salmon because the moment the salmon entered you know they go from the ocean the sea water and they hit that fresh water of the Copper River salmon their body automatically changes into reproductive mode so up until that day that they hit that fresh water they're just feeding and building up fat to make that 300 mile long journey go go go go nice 39 000 kings are set to return home to The Copper River this year 13 below the 10-year average of 46 000. out of these 39 000 Fisheries are only permitted to catch less than half to ensure enough salmon make it up the river for future Generations Kyle is only allowed to go out once enough salmon have escaped the fishing ground and have started to make their way up the Copper River the catch limit is different every day it can be reached at any moment and when it is Kyle has to stop fishing and return to Port immediately but he still needs to bring home enough to keep his business running and fishing in the Copper River Bears high costs if I came back empty-handed it would cost me you know it could be anywhere from 300 to 600 in fuel and probably a chunk of my pride for a company like Kyle's fuel can top twelve thousand dollars a season but that's still significantly lower than the cost of a permit to commercially fish in these Waters which is two hundred fifty thousand dollars when I first started commercial fishing I did not save any of my cash for myself just because I had taken on so much debt to buy into the fishery I couldn't afford to save anything with salmon for myself I eat salmon very regularly now all right come in come okay yeah come come oh go go go go go go oh my God that's insane last other day we just bought in seven Copper River Kings insane dude that was blockers once Kyle returns to Port the fish must be filleted and packaged as soon as possible to preserve its nutritional value it takes us about a week to get our salmon to Consumers the moment our fishermen returned report will fillet portion vacuum pack and flash freeze for a minimum of three days so then that way the seafood is consumable for sushi is considered sushi grade they're so fatty it's so oily it's hard to hold on to them they keep slipping [Music] Celsius King Salmon to fine dining and sushi restaurants but also directly to customers across the country shipping out of Alaska can get very expensive because of its remote location it costs him 65 dollars a ship a five pound box of salmon from Cordova to New York due to an increase in demand the price of king salmon has slowly gone up over the last five years a pound of copper river King Salmon is now going for 100 to 120 dollars although bigger fish sell for more huge King Salmon are getting harder to come by a 2020 study found that in the last 60 years salmon in Alaska have been getting smaller especially Kings since 1960 King Salmon have lost 8 percent in body length streams are warming earlier in the year and salmon are making their migrations at a younger age and smaller size there's also competition with other fish populations caused by hatcheries releasing the fish they produce into the sea in the long term this drop in size affects the Salmon's commercial value the transport of nutrients egg production and especially for king salmon it reduces the supply for Rural communities salmon and seafood in Alaska is more than just like more than a job it's very deeply rooted into our traditions we have very many rural communities in Alaska that rely on these wild salmon runs as like their only source of protein so you know they don't have you know some of them they don't have access to grocery stores so it's really important that we have these sand runs return for them buying a survival bunker used to be just something for doomsdayers and survivalists but this Factory in Texas can't keep up with demand because of the pandemic people want days like yesterday they want them so bad they'll pay up to get them right now the most basic habitable bunkers start at fifty thousand dollars not including installation but if you want to include a movie theater pool and rock climbing wall you can spend as much as 4.5 million dollars so why do people spend this kind of cash on something they might never use and why are bunkers so expensive meet Ron Hubbard not the founder of Scientology just Ron the founder of Atlas survival shelters so how do you get prepared well you get your food and water but once you have all that you're going to need a bunker and that's when I come into play he sells bunkers out of his 10 acre Factory in Sulfur Springs Texas first and foremost we want to make sure that the bunkers are airtight because God forbid any kind of Airborne plague or smoke chemical warfare biological warfare whatever Ron says he builds about 24 bunkers a year that are the size of homes as well as hundreds of smaller storm shelters he says there's a real demand for an underground Escape pandemic and politics aside conservative or liberal you just got to be concerned for the safety of your family in case this country ever ends up into any kind of Revolution Civil War or if we go into some kind of World War The Craze for bunkers is not exactly new a new Housing Development near Denver Colorado shows the nation's first model homes with built-in Fallout shelters thousands of Americans built their own nuclear fallout shelters at the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and 60s they were made out of steel to protect against radiation [Music] Larry Hall converted a cold war nuclear missile silo in Central Kansas into a 15-story inverted skyscraper the government decommissioned The Silo and Larry bought it for three hundred thousand dollars in 2008. whether it was Kim Jong-un before this or Iran with the previous threats or when Barack Obama was elected as president or when Donald Trump was elected as president I mean people have a variety of fears the survival condo project has 12 Apartments some costing up to 4.5 million dollars each so far he's sold all but two of the condos we have residential level five six seven eight nine ten and eleven then there's a library in classroom a theater and Lounge exercise and Spa we also have a sauna complete with different colored mood lighting after all if you're going to spend a serious amount of time trying to survive underground and if you can afford it you may as well thrive in recent years personalized disaster prep has grown into a multi-million dollar business at least 13.2 million Americans say they have plans and Provisions in place to survive a month or more without power running water or transportation prepping can simply mean storing a number of items to help cope during a blackout or having a storm shelter to survive tornadoes and hurricane force winds since the start of 2021 storm shelter sales are up 30 percent that's on top of a 35 increase the previous year possibly part of what has is that 2020 was such a traumatic year for all of us so putting a storm shelter in place for their family was something they can control they could actually impact and have have some control over the safety of their family but bunkers are in a different League Ron sells bunkers with a variety of add-ons like Escape tunnels and hidden doors so this typically will have a secret passage leading to a secret hatch going down to a secret room this isn't our grandfather's bomb shelter they have all the bells and whistles that you would have in a house I mean if you if you can have it in the house you can have it in the bunker this model costs about five hundred thousand dollars and fits three private bedrooms two bathrooms a kitchen dining room living room and a game room Ron says he has over a Year's worth of back orders even though prices for the materials to build the bunkers have gone up between 15 and 20 percent since last November the cost of wood is triple the cost of Stills triple the cost of gas is doubled everything's gone through the roof some people decide to build their own shelters about 60 miles outside of Dallas a doctor in his 40s built his own 1200 square foot bunker to remain anonymous about his labor of love life insurance and disability insurance [Music] if you can afford it so far he's spent around a hundred thousand dollars on the bunker that sits underneath his home and has yet to actually use it um but what makes a bunker so costly the pretty things like the stainless steel appliances and the nicer furniture and the higher ceilings are all really relatively low cost the things that are the cost drivers are the life support systems those are tremendously expensive bunkers are made of steel and concrete he took the doctor about a year and 22 000 worth of materials to plan and engineer his bunker he paid an excavation company twelve thousand two hundred dollars to dig a hole 80 feet long and 50 feet wide and about 16 feet below ground then he built the bunker quickly because he was afraid rain would ruin the excavation work he poured a concrete foundation walls and filled in the dirt around and over it he paid more than twenty thousand dollars for concrete twelve thousand dollars for a styrofoam and two thousand dollars for this single door he said he'll invest another thirty thousand dollars to build out a kitchen in other rooms of course he's already stocked the bunker with thirty thousand dollars worth of guns and ammunition pandemic fears are likely to stay strong for years after it's over and the truth is there's always something to fear [Music] Crush test dummies take all the hits so that we don't have to today they're jam-packed with technology and can cost more than a million dollars each but despite Decades of innovation one thing has remained the same the body shapes of the dummies themselves are still based on an average sized man from the middle of last century we went inside the factory of one of the top manufacturers to see how they're assembling the most advanced and diverse generation of dummies ever and to find out why they are so expensive humanitics is the largest manufacturer of Crash Test Dummies in the world based fittingly just outside America's Motor City Detroit but atds as they are known are a rare breed people think that there's hundreds of thousands or millions of Crash Test Dummies in the world in fact there really isn't the entire world market probably sells about 300 crash test dummies in any one year the most advanced Thor design takes up to five months to complete that's because they can include more than 30 000 parts it may look like a simple mannequin but inside the dummy is a lot of engineering and a lot of time and a lot of work a complex combination of metals rubber foam vinyl and Plastics make up each dummy and then inside comes an intricate network of sensors and electronics which feed thousands of bits of data back to car builders about the kinds of force experienced in a crash here a worker pours the vinyl mixture into a face mold before putting it into an oven and the finished product has got to be perfect each dummy needs to survive countless impacts while continuing to relay reliable data since the 1960s car safety improvements designed in part from data provided by Crash Test Dummies have saved an estimated 600 000 lives in the US so it has to be reliable not only for one or two crashes but for tens of thousands of crashes over a lifespan that could be 30 plus years after molding each one is trimmed and finished by hand underneath the skin a skeleton provides strength and durability but unlike human bones these ones don't break so easily most of the bone structures are made out of steel and it has to be machined we use numerically controlled Machining to make sure they're precisely manufactured where we have to meet all the tight tolerances he's Machining out the hip sockets where the femurs are going to go skulls ribs and pelvises are all modeled after their human counterparts older models are crude compared to the latest high-tech generation this Thor dummy even has a pelvis with movable Parts the Thor pelvis is much more anatomically correct it allows for more load cells and sensors to be installed on the dummy so that we can record more accurate information an array of sensors is used to detect which body parts would have been damaged or broken in a crash and which would have just been left with bumps and bruises every injury that we are able to calculate is because we have literally sensors in every body part that's likely to have an injury so it's very complex the sensors are built and calibrated in their own special lab the newest dummies contain hundreds of them when a dummy crashes the forces come from different directions at different strengths sensors can measure compression torque impact displacement and acceleration older dummies had cables running into them that sent information to an outside computer the weight of the cabling would bias the test in itself so we developed a data acquisition system this is really like the black box that goes with inside the crash test dummy but what that does is captures the data in microseconds from the crash and then that can be downloaded separately it's no wonder that a dummy comes with such a hefty price tag and if you look at our most advanced crash test dummies with hundreds of sensors and 30 000 Parts hand built to the most biofidelic standards in the world they can be as much as a million dollars yet the majority of crash tests are still carried out with less sophisticated dummies the vehicle is underway [Music] and in spite of the fact that more women than men in the US hold driver's licenses ratings agencies continue to use dummies based on a male body shape to compile their star ratings for car manufacturers for front crashes we use a hybrid 3 dummy that represents a mid-sized male for our side crashes we use what's called a sid 2s dummy represents a a smaller female occupant or an adolescent women and adolescents are represented by smaller versions of the male body shape even the male dummies used in tests are behind the times they're modeled on the height and weight of a man in the U.S from the 1980s while height hasn't changed waistlines have the average man has put on 20 pounds since then while the standard dummy has not humanetics and other dummy manufacturers began designing more representative dummies more than a decade ago the abdomen is slightly more biofidelic than the 50th has historically been the Thor generation of models include both a male version the Thor 50th and a female version the Thor fifth the difference here is it's not a scaled down male this is truly a female crash test dummy and if you look at the Thor fifth there are many new sensors that have been added to specifically address the injuries and concerns that we're seeing in a field associated with female drivers better reflecting real body shapes and sizes means a wider variety of dummies and greater production costs but the net result is better data and safer Vehicles you can actually provide additional information back to the designers of the car companies the designers of the airbag the seat belt and the other restraint suppliers and they can use that information to build even safer cars however the cars that we'll see years from now might not ever be tested with crash test dummies at all the future holds potentially many changes for our industry one of the things that that might change is that we will be conducting less physical testing with real dummies and real vehicles and more testing in the virtual world to represent a wider range of speeds impact angles a wider range of of occupants male female different sizes stone crab claws are one of the priciest Seafoods you can buy and depending on their size a pound of claws at a restaurant can cost as much as seventy dollars but catching these crabs is hard work strangely enough Fishers can only harvest the claws from the crabs while the bodies must be returned to the ocean so what makes these claws so coveted and why are they so expensive you can only fish for stone crab on the Southeastern coast of the U.S Cuba the Bahamas and Mexico and it's Florida where more stone crabs are caught than anywhere else these Crustaceans are markedly more expensive than other popular crabs a pound of claws can cost two times the price of Alaskan snow crab legs part of what makes these crabs so costly is the labor-intensive process of catching them there's a nice crab Ernie Patton Jr has been commercially fishing for stone crabs for over 40 years with limited time to harvest each year his crew must start their days early sailing out before the sun rises the process begins with dropping traps down to the ocean floor this is probably the funnest part you know you get to be a little more physical you know what I mean it's a little bit of a rhythm thing going on here it's like uh dancing mariachi but plucking these claws can be a dangerous process the class on an adult crab can have as much as 9 000 pounds of pressure per square inch with the enormous pressure that's exerted they could actually pop a finger off at the joint these crabs they have them onto their own you can easily get bit you know if you're not careful I've only been bit maybe say eight times in my career popped over a million balls in my day the crew leaves the traps in the water for about two weeks before they're pulled in by a rope then each one must be sorted thoroughly we come back in a couple of weeks and then got a couple in the Trap we're gonna pull them out we're gonna pop their claws and uh hope for a good day Crews break off the claws quickly so they don't keep the crabs out of water for too long but even if a trap is full of crabs Kevin can't necessarily take every claw the state requires all harvested claws to be at least 2 and 7 8 inches long crabbers can legally break off both claws if they meet the required size the ones that look smaller we measure them on the gauge like that one crabs are one of few animals that can regenerate when a crab loses a claw or two it can grow each one back in time on average claws can take up to three years to grow large enough to harvest again which is why the state requires that crabbers pay close attention to each claw's size this ensures Fishers don't remove one prematurely but despite the claw's ability to regrow some researchers have questioned the sustainability of this system the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission found that 46 to 82 percent of crabs died from the loss of two claws while 23 to 59 died from a removal of one that's compared to just 12.8 percent of crabs that died when no claws were removed crabs can also only regrow a claw if the joint that linked it is left intact otherwise they'll bleed to death this makes the way these claws are broken all the more important for preserving the fishery's future hiring enough people to make the operation run smoothly is another reason for the high price of these claws and then there's one other cost you'd never expect each trip requires 900 pounds of pig's feet for bait and that's just about half of the total cost of fishing for the day normal running costs to go stormcraft today is about eleven hundred dollars to leave the dock late prices have gone up fuel prices have gone up you know the track tag prices have gone up after 10 hours on the boat Ernie's crew must boil and Ice their catch as soon as they return otherwise the claws won't stay fresh to finish the day by weighing each claw which ultimately sets the final value claws are sold in four sizes at Billy Stone Crab Restaurant Prices range from 35 to 70 dollars per pound we run about four thousand pounds of stone crab through the restaurant each week on a busy weekend we sell seven to eight hundred pounds of stone crab the most expensive order costs 140 dollars the plate is made up of four seven ounce colossal claws which yields just under one pound of crab meat fresh cooked claws sold on ice or less expensive but even then the mediums will cost you twenty nine dollars per pound years ago stone crabs weren't such valuable food in the 1890s they were nothing more than bycatch in spiny lobster traps Fishers began to keep the crabs that fell into those traps and by the late 20th century the stone crab fishery had become one of the most valuable industries in Florida today it's worth 30 million dollars and the prices of these claws aren't likely to drop anytime soon data from the FWC show the number of crabs caught each year has declined by seven hundred twelve thousand pounds that's since Peak harvest in the late 1990s many commercial Harvesters have also started fishing farther offshore pointing to a lesser number of crabs in the area the FWC says both of these changes signify a threat of overfishing and prices have gone up in order to keep the fishery profitable to further protect the species future the FWC instated even stricter regulations last year two changes include an increase in the minimum size of harvestable Claws and cutting the fishing season short by two weeks these limitations aren't likely to lower the cost of stone crab claws but the goal is to help preserve them and keep Florida Fishers busy for years to come this is dancing the rice it's a traditional technique to extract this ancient rice grain from its Hull it's just one of the many steps that members of the Ojibwe tribe perform to savor the grain known as manumin meaning the good Berry this type of wild rice has been harvested by the tribe in the Great Lakes region of North America for centuries a pound of it can sell for 24. 15 times as much as white rice for the Ojibwe people harvesting this rice means much more than money it's a way to connect with their ancestors and pass on their Traditions to Future Generations but as the rest of the world discovers this ancient grain the tribe fears that it will lose its importance and that it will be separated from its natural ecosystem so what is the meaning of manumin and why is it so expensive [Music] we're heading over to one of our tribal leagues that's not the reservation this lake is 100 owned by the tribe people see you can't own the water but this is a reservation plate While most wild rice on the market is cultivated in patties to ripen all at the same time manuman still follows the natural cycle of the rice plant this difference has not gone unnoticed and the grain's popularity has been growing for decades but for the Ojibwe tribe manuman is sacred they continue to harvest it by hand which is one reason it can sell for twice as much as cultivated wild rice see everything has a life has has a spirit so that's why we offer tobacco to whatever we're doing Leland is the rice chief of the tribal band here at Mo Lake it's here that manuman grows every fall when the season begins Leland heads out to the lake with his cousin Chad to harvest the rice right now I'm push-pulling Chad Chad's our picker I'm the push puller we're looking for the rice right now the puller's job is to look for their rice and put him on the rice so he can pick it looking for the rice on top you know like right here you can see it's there's rice kernels on top a couple of spots and even if there's nothing there I'll still grab it and Pull It in something could fall off the rice one two one two one two every time you say me good to harvest the rice Chad the knocker uses a set of wooden sticks to knock the rice directly off the plants into the canoe as a knocker Chad is following in the footsteps of his grandfather who used to Harvest Moon as well I made this set myself the year the year he passed and in this set is the set that he made the year before he passed makes me feel good as he works he thanks the plants for today's Harvest give me a glitch I mean glitch me glitch me glitch saying thanks also dictates a rhythm for picking that's the best sound in the world unlike cultivated rice manuman doesn't all ripen at the same time so Leland and Chad must set out in the canoe multiple times during the season [Music] it's small in your hand but after a while of being out here it it adds up I mean we were only out here for an hour and about a quarter of our boat is covered but what's here on the boat's floor isn't the size of the final Harvest within this they'll often find unripe rice and holes with no rice inside at all green rice when we're talking about Green rice it's actually green green rice and it's this black rice here is right there's years where we get what we call a ghost race the gold strikes will it'll be you'll have a you'll have the haul of the rice and there will be nothing in it'll be empty some of it some stocks don't always always grow when my Newman is sold it usually sells for around 24 per pound the price varies depending on the overall harvest the stock and the buyer's connections you know how people refer to oil as Black Gold this is our black gold now that Leland and Chad are back from the lake it's time to dry the rice depending on how ripe it is it may need to be soaked overnight see this this rice we didn't really have to uh get wet last night just because it's already starting to ripen really good whole Community gets involved in the drying process great opportunity tribe members to learn from their elders air drying is the first step in separating the rice grain from the holes removing the holes further reduces the size of the overall Harvest but today's trip to the rice beds has been more successful than harvests in recent years this year we had some nice greens it was long it was it was fair so this year your percentage of rice would be about 80 20. 80 percent of the green you'll get you'll probably lose 20 percent with the Halls we're actually converting that rice from a medicine to a food whenever that wild rice has moisture or water in it it still has a light [Music] removing moisture is important for the following step parching the moist on a wood fire it's done in a metal pan with a wooden paddle this part is going to be the coolest part of the tub and this is going to be the hardest part so you're going to put this up on the fire and you're going to actually see this actually turned brown as it starts parking [Music] if a grain retains too much moisture it'll pop just like popcorn [Music] but the separation of the grains from their holes is far from complete to do that Roger makes a shallow hole in the ground pours in the rice and covers it with deer hide he then Dons a pair of soft Buckskin moccasins and threshes the rice by stepping on it this step is called dancing the Royce and Roger takes it quite literally it looks like the twist but it's the ignition rv2 step a little bit we tell everyone I said this is how I actually how I got my wife of uh 47 years now the pose he uses are not for balance he uses them to transfer his weight to avoid breaking the rice Rogers two-step was successful once separated from the grains the holes are so lightweight they fly away like dust and that's exactly how they will be filtered out by tossing the batch in the air from this birch bark basket [Music] nowadays dancing and tossing the rice can also be done by a machine yeah you know you got two four six 12 moccasins 12 12 feet working at once instead of two feet working at once as it rotates it's taken the taking the halls off [Music] you can see that there's long green there's some that's a little broken up that little broken up stuff is good for soup rice about this faster method the tribe places great importance on continuing to dance and toss the rice by hand there's Elders that always told us to pay attention because someday you're going to be you're going to be teaching this you know as a kid I just kind of laughed about it and I was like yeah you know I'm not gonna I'm not gonna be that guy but here I am teaching everybody what I know but while a good return is important the tribe doesn't Harvest to make a profit manuman is only sold when needed you know you can't just buy this on on Amazon I'm sure that there are certain individuals that will sell it on the Internet it's all about people who are around here who can make connections with with somebody who does this it's all about those relationships and and how they can how what price they're willing to give for for a pound of rice minoan contains three times more protein than white rice more vitamin B than brown rice and is rich in antioxidants these values have made it an essential part of the Ojibwe diodes for centuries together with berries fish meat vegetables and maple sugar well yeah there is many different ways to make rice you can add wild rice to just about any any kind of dish I mean we've got berries with wild rice walleye cheek chowder with wild rice all right doesn't even compare nutritionally nutritionally white rice or even Uncle Ben doesn't even have anything over us mole lake is fully owned by the local Ojibwe tribe which carefully controls the flow of water and monitors its minerals no motor boats are allowed in the lake and Duck and goose hunting is prohibited during the rice picking season we don't allow lead shot to be used when we shoot the birds because then that settles into the into the sediment the plant will uptake that lead this is a ancient rice bed I mean we had rice that was carbon dated 800 years ago the leilan and Chad harvesting manumen isn't about collecting every last grain of rice from the plants not all the rice falls into the canoe and that's okay the rice that falls back into the water will reseed the Lake for the next season We Believe that you take what you need not what you want over the last 200 years the ecosystem that supports manumen has come increasingly under threat the tribe was forced to seed lands to the federal government in 1837 and 1842 and even today regularly receives multi-million dollar offers from different suitors to sell the lake as the Newman becomes more popular a lot of non non-tribal people who haven't done this they want to go out and try and do it for themselves so one of the concerns is that they don't know how to to do it because they can actually destroy a rice bed by by when they're picking they they hit it too hard they're trying to get everything off of it although the Harvest was good this year this isn't always the case there's been people that would come off the lake daily with 200 plus pounds there are years where you come in with an average of 150 pounds this year seems to be one of the best over the past Century the hand harvested manuman habitat has declined by a third water pollution oil pipelines fluctuating water levels Rising temperatures and invasive fish species are all factors threatening the delicate ecosystem at mall Lake and other Lakes where manuming grows there are other lakes around here that do have rice but you know it's not as big of a green as what we got or you know it ain't as thick as what we have here on this race Lee this is the reason we're here is because of this race that we fought over this race to live here what Leland is referring to is the Battle of mole Lake a clash between NATO tribes that killed 500 people in 1806. people were getting pushed from the East to the West in Lakota happened to be some of them still happen to be some of them we happen to be some of them but our people just never left and they weren't going to leave this area because this is where the spirits told us to stay it's essential that the lake has a constant supply of fresh water to avoid any sediment buildup which would prevent nutrients from reaching the rice plants as custodians of the lake local Harvesters do what they can to manage this natural resource this water isn't always at this at this level they're the the creek down here we got a dam in the water that we build every year and so we can bring the water up the same grain but domesticated by farmers and grown in paddies can now be found as a fraction of the cost and is often mislabeled as wild rice but for the Ojibwe tribe naturally grown manumin has a value that can't be easily counted in dollars and cents what people know as wild rice is not what what we call it we call it the Newman and it's the good seed or the good food and people say that it's wild but it's it's it's it's it was put here for a purpose for for us this small blue gemstone is one of the rarest in the world and because of the unique way it forms in the earth Bonita white Sparkles even brighter than diamonds making it incredibly expensive a single carrot can cost over twelve thousand dollars but you can only really find this gem in one place so why is Bonito why it's so hard to find and what makes it so expensive how is spinita white different from other gemstones it has a brighter vitreous luster that means it looks like glass but brighter shinier it also has a high dispersion or fire meaning it can sparkle more than other gemstones so here we are on the top of the mine this is a private mine it's part of Bonita white mining company owned by John and Dave Schreiner the company is stationed here because facet grade Bonita light can be found in only one location San Benito County California that's why it's the state's gem there have been microscopic deposits found in Japan but so far this is the only place where you can find it where it's actually big enough to hold in your hand and to put in jewelry not knowing how rare it was miners used to extract the needle light just like any other gem with explosions and blunt force and now the supply is finite gemstones like Benito white are generally scattered but sometimes there's a vein underground where concentrated amounts of the gem collect Bonita white formed when an oceanic plate and a crustal plate came together one plate slid under the other and water got trapped in the fault line magma then intruded into the fault line and mixed with the trapped water as cracks and veins formed in the surrounding Rock the superheated mixture flowed into them here The Rare Element barium bound with titanium silica and other elements together they formed Bonita White but finding the gem is a bit of a guessing game and if John and Dave guess incorrectly the cost is high to help them find where Bonita light might be they look for this the white part of the rock is nitrolite and the dark part blushest these are two minerals that surround and protect Bonita light if they see the white it may mean they found a Bonita white vein and when the vein breaks out onto the surface it's referred to as an outcrop a big vein or a big outcrop a Bonita light was right here and had fallen against the mountain that was dug out dynamited all the material off the top of it's gone that doesn't mean there's not Stones here it's all they're all over the place [Music] yet a Benito Wayne hasn't been found here since the late 1990s so today John and Dave are mining in a location they think has potential they have to narrow down where they think the vein is because Excavating and drilling is expensive and they can't afford to be wrong core drilling alone will cost them two hundred thousand dollars funding is always an issue mining is not a cheap Venture normally that's what's holding us back just having the funds to actually move forward so as they work up to that funding they're also working to confirm exactly where the vein is after they load all the material they excavated they can begin processing it to see if there's a concentration of the needle wipe that starts with sorting this is the first stage of the wash Plant right over here is where the material gets dumped in originally so everything above inch and a half gets stopped right there after this John can locate larger specimens that need to be acid etched where acid is used to carefully break off the Bonito light from its surroundings they also screen for everything under an eighth inch and the Sorting material goes up a long conveyor belt to be washed in the tremel the tremel shakes and cleans the Rocks before they hit the blacklight room the needleway is fluorescent so the Shriners use UV light to identify the gem without damaging it after he screens and washes all the fluorescent pieces and collects the best ones it's one of them that is a Bonita light even though John found some good pieces of Benito light today's excavation was just okay this is good um we've done better still he and Dave remain hopeful they're confident that they're getting really close to locating that vein finding another Bonita white vein would be outstanding it would change a lot of things that is the direction we're going in and that we want to go in it's a financially uh hindering but we are getting there but even if John and Dave find a vein it doesn't mean all the Bonito white they excavate can be sold for top dollar is a naturally small gem like diamonds so most of the Rocks they find can't be faceted into a clean clear gem on average you lose about 80 percent of the stone during The Cutting process it also depends on how clean you want the stone to be but the remarkable and highly valuable properties of Benito I make all this work worth it [Music] what's also very unique about Bonita White is that it is doubly refractive so when the light enters the stone it splits into two rays this creates a doubling effect giving Bonito white a complex internal appearance yet on the surface it looks like light bounces off the gem on all sides the depth these qualities create is enriched by the Stone's color which shows in the price in a colored gemstone is color color color color is the first and last and most important factor affecting value in a colored gemstone and depth also holds the color like a deeper Stone can have a deeper color and that makes it more valuable the darker the color the more valuable the stone typically is [Music] [Music] thank you please

Channel: Business Insider

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Id: ZajeWUKw1KU

Length: 97min 44sec (5864 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 31 2023